Girl's Night Out
by TheShadowArchitect
Summary: An Epic tale of pride, karma, and death by paintball. What would Atlantis do without the females?


Girl's night out: a Stargate: Atlantis fanfic

What do you think would happen if the women of Atlantis were to go on a night out? Would the city run as usual or would all of Lantea implode in on itself? A story of how much Atlantis relies on the hard working female population.

I do not own Stargate, and have never built one in my basement from spare parts from a toaster. Don't sue me.

Sam was eager to get a vacation, even if it was only for the night, and she could tell from the small crowd of happily talking people around her that she was not the only one. The Gateroom was full of almost all the women on Atlantis, checking bags, food and milling around the gate, waiting for their reprieve from the daily duties and hassles that came with living in a foreign galaxy. As the Gate whooshed to life, she waved goodbye to the forms of McKay and Sheppard on the balcony above. They waved back, however halfheartedly.

"Why do they get a Girls night out when we have to stay here and babysit this old city? She took half my science team with her!" McKay grumbled as the last of the Gateroom emptied out. Sheppard nodded.

"The way she sold it to me was that if we had a guy's night out, there wouldn't be enough people here to maintain two or three rooms, let alone the entire city. I figured she was right." He said.

"And you got to be leader for the day too didn't you?" added McKay.

"Yep, but really it's only for a night, what could happen that would require them all here anyway? If we can survive wraith attacks and Replicators, I'm sure we can run a giant floating city for twenty four hours." Sheppard said with confidence. McKay just looked at him smugly.

"I doubt they'll be gone that long anyway." He said. A look of unease crept across Sheppard's face.

"What planet did you say you sent them to again?"

"It's no place dangerous, it's not like it's occupied by wraith or something…."

"McKay, answer the question!" Sheppard said, getting a little annoyed.

"P7W-5931"

"That place Lorne's team went three weeks ago? They are going to kill you McKay, via slow and painful death. Probably by paintball gun."

"You can't kill someone with a paintball gun, Sheppard, it's scientifically impossible."

"Depends on just how many times they hit you, where they hit you, and just how much internal bleeding Keller can sit and watch before she steps in to help. Judging by where you've sent them, her tolerance should be higher than usual." McKay squirmed a little.

"At least you have twenty four hours to figure out how to suck up to them before they come back, thirsty for your blood. Knowing them, if we sent them to the hurricane planet, they wouldn't come back until they were due, just to prove a point."

Sam trudged thought the undergrowth. The planet was dark, wet, and painfully humid, with so much vegetation that it was impossible even to see the twin suns above their heads. It was almost like baking and boiling at the same time, in a kind of natural oven. Keller leaned over to her. She was dripping in sweat and obviously tired.

"Did we go to the wrong planet by mistake?" she asked.

"I'd like to hope so, for the sake of whoever dialed us out. This is P7W-5931, Lorne's team went here three weeks ago." Sam said

"What happened?"

"Only two of them came back conscious."

"Isn't that kind of normal for Lorne's team, hostile planet or not?" Keller asked, who had been playing rock, paper, scissors with Carson as to who had to treat them after the next mission.

"Guess so, but if it turns out not to be a mistake, I'm just going to skip reprimanding, their punishment is going straight to death by paintball."

"Can you kill someone with a paintball gun?" Keller asked

"It all depends on how many times you hit them, where you hit them, and how many marines I order to hold you and Carson back."

Three hours after Sheppard's fated 'we can run the city for twenty-four measly hours' speech, the city was in chaos. Ten scientists and three marines had been hospitalized in a series of freak accidents. The jumper bay had been flooded after some weather experiment the ancients had been working on had backfired severely, and of course, the remaining scientists were all busy scrambling to keep Atlantis afloat while numerous indefinable power surges wracked the city. Sheppard ran through one of the many long corridors, past the frantic technicians and the marines shouting orders at them. McKay ran a few steps behind him.

"What could happen, you asked! It's only for one night, you said! And now, we're running along a corridor that will probably collapse in on us in the next five minutes, just to irk us. And if this doesn't kill us, I've only got 20 hours and forty five minutes to live before my slow and painful death!" he said.

"Does this stuff happen everyday and we just don't know about it, or did it all just decide to happen today? I think if there's any time to start believing in Karma, it's now!" Sheppard shouted back to him while dodging a stray lightning bolt.

"So you think this whole thing is my fault? By sending Sam and the rest of the female species on this planet to the planet of extremes, I've brought the once most powerful city in the galaxy to its knees! I don't think so, and let's just be thankful that none of our 'friends' found out we're in this much…" he trailed off upon hearing the familiar sound of a wraith dart.

"Crap."

The suns started to set on P7W-5931. Sam sat on the damp ground amid the sounds of the jungle and the moans and groans of the people around her. She had to admit, she did hold running from Wraith and Gould above this on the 'things to do on a day off' list. So far, however, the majority of her days off had included the aforementioned activities and the rest of her days off didn't look too bright either.

That's when she realized it was getting colder. Really colder, really fast. It seemed that as the suns set, the air and moisture started to freeze almost instantly. Immediately, she told two scientists to build fires and assigned a couple marines to start the tent pitching. Then, she joined the others as they set up camp and reinforced the tents with dry leaves and other matter they found on the forest floor.

When the camp was complete, with all the tents relatively huddled together and a fire going in the middle of the circle, Sam stood. The sounds of the jungle had subsided, giving way to subzero temperatures and a strange crackling sound coming from all around them.

"Everyone, listen up, this night is going to get even colder. One person in each tent has to stay awake at all times, understood?" a chorus of 'yeses' and 'understoods' came from the inside of the other tents. "Good, at the ends of each two hour period, the person awake will switch off, giving them a chance to rest and get warm. Our tent will give the signal that you are about to switch, and if you do not respond we'll assume something is wrong. Everybody got it?" there was another round of 'yeses' and then nothing, Sam gave the signal for the first watch and counted the responses. There were ten.

Back home on Atlantis, there was a good amount of girlish screaming going on. A giant squid, and several other sci-fi clichés had attached themselves to the underside of the city and the Wraith were closing in. Beckett ran the chair but was only just barely managing to keep them at bay. McKay ran from room to room, shouting at people and hoping they could come up with something soon enough to save their hides. Sheppard got on the citywide.

"Everyone, I've got a plan! Well, maybe, see, we know that we have no way to fight everything off at once, right? So what If we didn't have to?" there was no specific answers, just a lot of static. "The Wraith are on our doorstep, if we gated to some other planet, and made them think that we gave up, they would a) take the city and fight off everything else so that when we came back, the threat and damage levels would be manageable and we could clean it up before the women get back or b) figure we've set the self-destruct and hi-tail it out of there. Either way we win." Sheppard finished. Sure enough, McKay's voice was the first to break the relative silence.

"There are huge gaping holes in that plan, Sheppard! You think the Wraith would just give the city back to us no questions asked?"

"No, but there are only a few Wraith here right now, it could take hours for them to bring reinforcements, that means we could take the city back relatively easily. So here's the plan, everyone gets to the gateroom now, we go through the gate, and that will give McKay 38 minutes to design a program that will tell the gate to redial again and again, thereby keeping the gate under our control, for a few hours at least until we think of a plan to retake the city. Any questions? The rest of Atlantis was silent. "Get to it then, bring what you need for the plan, and if you're not in the Gateroom in ten minutes, you are subject to attack, but you do still have 38 minutes to get to our side before the gate will be dialed from the other side, understood?" again he got nothing but static.

9 ½ hours later.

"I don't believe it, the plan actually worked!" McKay said as they stood in the partially flooded Gateroom, a few dead wraith around them and a whole lot of mess.

"Dunno, stranger things have happened to us and I'm not complaining! And we even have a whole ten hours to prove that nothing even went wrong while the women were gone."

"Gulp."

When Sam woke up the next morning, just after sunrise, the temperature was still well below freezing, but warmer than it had been the previous night. Teyla was already up in her tent. Sam looked at her watch. It was three Atlantis time, which gave them nine hours to pack up and get back to the gate. She woke up the rest of the women and they set to work.

6 hours later, at the gate.

"We have three hours left before we're due back. Good work, everyone. Now the only thing left to do is actually take advantage of our day off. It's not so bad out here in the open, and there's even a small lake over behind the Stargate, enjoy yourselves!"

Sam entered Atlantis through the Stargate, closely followed by Teyla and Keller, then the rest, all talking animatedly and laughing. Sheppard and McKay greeted them on the way up to the control room.

"So, good time?" he asked, hoping for good news.

"Yeah, it was great. There were a lot of neat new plants we have yet to discover on our planet, and they were incredibly resilient to cold. Doctor Brown wants to see if she could go back right away, there were some specimens she collected that we couldn't bring back on our own." Sam said.

"No, wait!" but it was too late. Sam had pushed the button that opened the jumper bay doors. Water cascaded into the control and gate rooms. Sam picked herself up and pushed a strand of blond hair out of her face.

"To anyone who wants one, there are paintball guns in the armory." She said, before storming off to her quarters. McKay and Sheppard ran for their lives.

Well, hope you like it, please review, it means the world!


End file.
